About Journal of Jiaying University

Journal of Jiaying University

Overview and identity

The Journal of Jiaying University is the Chinese-language academic journal of Jiaying University in Meizhou, Guangdong Province. Its Chinese title is Jiaying Xueyuan Xuebao, following the pattern of the Chinese university journal, or xuebao, in which a university sponsors and edits a scholarly periodical under its own name. The clean record for this profile describes it as the scholarly journal of the Hakka capital's undergraduate university, a recognised venue for Hakka culture studies, alongside general humanities and science research. That Hakka brief is the journal's defining feature, and the sources consulted support it from several directions: the host university's Hakka Research Institute, its School of Hakka Studies, and its publicly stated characteristic of being rooted in the Hakka homeland. No International Standard Serial Number was attested in the sources consulted for this profile, and none is claimed here. The journal is identified in this profile by its title, its sponsoring university and its city of Meizhou.

The host university: a women's normal school of 1913

Jiaying University grew out of the Women's Normal School established in 1913, in the account given by university introductions and reference summaries consulted. An institutional account in Chinese-derived English gives the predecessor more fully as Meixian County Women's Normal School, founded in 1913, and summarises the institution's history as 105 years of schooling in that dated account, comprising decades of secondary-level, junior college and, later, undergraduate education. The university received its Jiaying name because Meizhou was known as Jiaying during the Qing dynasty: Meizhou was called Jiaying Prefecture in the Qing, from which Jiaying College took its name, in the institutional account's explanation. Jiaying University is a public provincial undergraduate university in Meizhou. Reference material records that in 2006 the university successfully passed the undergraduate education evaluation of the Ministry of Education of China. A journal published by such an institution inherits more than a century of teacher-education history, beginning with the training of women teachers in the first years of the Republic of China.

Meizhou: the Hakka capital

Meizhou is a city in northeastern Guangdong described in university introductions as a famous historic city, the hometown of Marshal Ye Jianying, and holder of titles including China's excellent tourism city, the Hakka Capital, homeland of culture, homeland of football and homeland of overseas Chinese. The Hakka designation is central. The Hakka are a Han Chinese subgroup whose heartlands lie in the mountainous border region of Guangdong, Fujian and Jiangxi, and Meizhou is presented in these sources as their main settlement and cultural capital. Introductions describe the university's goal as establishing itself in Meizhou, being oriented towards grassroots organisations, serving Guangdong Province, radiating nationwide and extending abroad, a formulation that reflects Meizhou's diaspora: a homeland of overseas Chinese whose emigrants maintain ties to the prefecture across the world. For the journal, that setting supplies a research territory in Hakka language, history, architecture, folk custom, migration and diaspora studies that is, by common description in the sources, centred on its own home city.

Hakka studies: institute, school and research base

The institutional machinery behind the journal's Hakka brief is documented in the introductions consulted. Jiaying University's Hakka Research Institute is described as a key provincial-level research base in humanities and social sciences in Guangdong's ordinary universities, and as the research base of Guangdong Hakka studies. Its School of Hakka Studies is described as the first of its kind in China, in the introductions' claim, also rendered as the first Hakka academy in mainland China. The education of excellent Hakka culture and tradition is said to run through the whole process of talent training at the university. A scholarly article consulted on Hakka dialect documents in Meizhou records, in its scholarly apparatus, an ethnographic research programme associated with the Hakka Research Center at Jiaying University that collected works by scholars from South China universities into a multi-volume series on traditional Hakka society and culture. This profile records those descriptions as they appear in their sources. Their combined weight supports the clean record's judgement: Jiaying is not merely a university that happens to sit in Hakka country, but an institution that has organised institutes, a school and a research base around Hakka studies, and whose journal is a recognised venue for that field.

Hakka language and dialect documents

Language is one of the most concrete branches of the Hakka research the journal's host sustains. The article on Meizhou Hakka dialect documents consulted for this profile describes, for the late Qing dynasty and early Republic, four categories of material recording the local dialect: works by local scholars, foreign documents on the Meizhou dialect, dialect documents more generally, and contract documents. It names, among the local records, a Jiaying prefectural gazetteer dialect volume of 1898 listing nearly 300 Hakka dialect words, building on an earlier local chronicle's dialect collection of some 450 words, and describes those records as having the prototype of Hakka dialect study and as valuable for the study of Chinese dialects and regional culture today. A university whose scholars work on such documents gives its journal a philological strand within Hakka studies: the patient recording of a spoken language whose historical documentation is scattered across gazetteers, contracts and missionary-era materials. That strand sits naturally alongside the historical, ethnographic and architectural strands of the wider Hakka programme.

Scope and scholarly content beyond Hakka studies

The clean record is explicit that Hakka culture studies stand alongside general humanities and science research in the journal, and the host's breadth supports that scope. University introductions describe, in their dated accounts, 19 schools and 2 teaching departments, 45 undergraduate majors in one account, falling into 10 disciplines including the arts and sciences, a full-time student body of 19,282 and a part-time student body of 8,499 from 22 provinces of China in that account. Another institutional account gives a library collection of 2.338 million books, 1.0718 million e-books and 2,448 types of paper periodicals, with a campus of 1,085,500 square metres and a building area of 620,100 square metres. Those are dated figures from their respective introductions, not a single current census. Their consistent picture is a comprehensive provincial undergraduate university whose journal must serve literature, history, education, mathematics, the natural sciences, engineering and other taught fields, while Hakka studies provide its best-known specialisation. Readers should therefore approach the title as a general xuebao with a famous regional strength, not as a single-subject Hakka periodical.

Teacher education and service to mountainous areas

Teacher education remains the historical spine of Jiaying University, from the 1913 women's normal school through its secondary, junior college and undergraduate stages. Introductions describe the university's features as being rooted in the Hakka homeland, serving mountainous areas and promoting Hakka culture, and its tenet as based on Meizhou, facing the grassroots, serving Guangdong, radiating the whole country and extending overseas. Meizhou is a mountainous prefecture, and a university that trains teachers for its county and township schools performs a service function that a metropolitan university does not replicate. Journals of normal-school origin typically publish education research, support the professional development of teaching staff and connect the university to regional schools. In Jiaying's case, that educational mission and the Hakka mission reinforce each other: teachers trained in Meizhou carry Hakka language and culture into the classrooms of the Hakka heartland, and the journal's pages can record scholarship on both the teaching and the culture being taught.

Diaspora, donations and the overseas Chinese connection

University introductions record that, since its founding, Jiaying University has received donations totalling 100 million yuan RMB from domestic and overseas compatriots and alumni, notably Dr Zeng Xianzi and Dr Tian Jiabing in the introductions' naming. That record reflects Meizhou's standing as a homeland of overseas Chinese: diaspora philanthropy for education is a documented feature of the university's development, and the named donors are among the best-known Hong Kong-based Hakka philanthropists associated with educational giving in their home region. For the journal's research environment, the diaspora connection is also intellectual. Hakka studies at Meizhou necessarily address migration: the movement of Hakka people from the Guangdong-Fujian-Jiangxi borderlands to Southeast Asia and beyond, the remittance and donation ties that followed, and the preservation of Hakka identity abroad. A journal recognised as a venue for Hakka culture studies, published in the Hakka capital with a research base for Guangdong Hakka studies behind it, is a natural home for scholarship on that diaspora as well as on the homeland itself.

Place among Guangdong college journals

Within Guangdong, Jiaying's journal occupies the Hakka position. Zhaoqing University's journal, covered in this batch, draws on Cantonese Lingnan culture, Duan inkstone and Star Lake in the west of the province; Shaoguan's, in the wider batch, draws on Danxia landform and northern Guangdong studies; Hanshan Normal University's draws on Chaoshan culture in the east. Jiaying's draws on the Hakka heartland of the northeast, a culture defined by migration, mountain settlement, dialect and a worldwide diaspora, documented by an institute, a dedicated school and a provincial research base at its own university. That is a distinctive and well-evidenced brief. No other Guangdong college journal in this directory combines a 1913 normal-school origin, a name taken from a Qing dynasty prefecture, and a first-of-its-kind Hakka school in the claims of its own introductions.

Access, citation and continuing significance

The journal is a Chinese-language publication, encountered by researchers under its Chinese title, Jiaying Xueyuan Xuebao, through Chinese academic databases and through citations in Hakka studies, regional history and dialect scholarship. Because no ISSN was attested in the sources consulted, this profile identifies it by title, sponsoring university and place, and records that limitation plainly rather than supplying an unverified number. The Journal of Jiaying University endures as the scholarly record of an institution that began with a women's normal school in 1913, took its name from Qing dynasty Jiaying Prefecture, and built its modern identity around the Hakka homeland it serves. Its recognised role as a venue for Hakka culture studies, set within a comprehensive programme of humanities and science publishing, makes it an essential point of reference for readers interested in how a provincial university journal can become the printed home of an entire people's regional scholarship.